What do you call them. All my life I’d called them crayfish. When I went to New Orleans one year, I noticed they were calling them either crawfish or crawdads. recently I heard mudbugs. I have never heard anyone in the south calling them crayfish. Recently, I made a wonderful fish chowder with catfish and crayfish, but not wanting to give away my liberal eastern heritage, I tried very hard to call them crawdads. It felt very wrong.
What do you call them?
Any of the first 3 would not have been too uncommon where I grew up. But I picked Crayfish.
Rivierkreeft (straight translation: river lobster - that is, roughly, fresh water lobster). They’re becoming slightly popular - as food - in the Netherlands after the damming of the Zuiderzee (see also IJsselmeer).
IMO:
Crayfish: This person has never seen an Astacoidea in real life, only boiled on their $25 Crayfish-and-Lobster plate. Probably likes foreign films and book larning.
Crawfish: Makes a living catching crawfish in a Louisiana swamp or somewhere else in the south. Eats them raw by cracking the shell with his one remaining tooth.
Crawdad: Happy medium, other parts of the country. I hope me not having a stereotype doesn’t give myself away too much.
Mudbug: Haven’t heard this too often. I assume someone’s folksy grandpa.
you could very well be right about everything else, but crayfish do in fact live up north. We fished them out of the stream in the chicago area regularly. We don’t generally consider them food though. I have no idea why. They are quite tasty.
being from the suburbs of the south, i call them crawfish, and the hill people from the western part of the state call them “crawdads”
Crawdads. I’m in Texas and grew up occasionally catching bucketfuls of them in creeks using a push net.
I call them delicious!
I remember a very funny episode of The Beverly Hillbillies when Granny is getting a care-package from Pearl that are the crawdads in “Crik”-water.
One of the early B/W episodes which were much funnier than the later colorized episodes.
Crawdad. Like the magazine.
People here call them crayfish because that’s what the pet stores label them as. I realize they’re edible, but I’ve never seen them on a menu, probably because lobsters more than fill that culinary niche.
I’ve heard people - in movies and books set in the south - call them crawdads, but not crawfish or mudbugs.
Texan here. I voted for “crawfish”. I bet Houstonians could fill the Canyon Diablo crater with shells after crawfish season. I called them “crawdads” when I was a kid. I don’t know when I switched terms, but “crawdads” sounds kinda kiddish and cutesy to me now.
As kids we used to catch them with fish aquarium nets in the creek behind the public golf course. I’ve developed an allergy to them (and other shellfish) in adulthood. I haven’t eaten one in years. I have to eat before going crawfish boils. I miss the communal ritual of eating them at boils.
To me “crayfish” is a formal or scientific name for the creature and not a name people usually use in relation to food. Sorta like the word “legume”.
Crawdads or crawdaddies is what we used to call them when I was growing up (also in Texas). Today, most people around here seem to call them crawfish or mudbugs.
I voted “crawfish,” although I think I grew up with “crayfish.” It’s hard to tell, because pretty much everyone I know refers to them as “crawfish” now, as that’s what they’re called in Cajun/Creole/New Orleans cuisine restaurants.
Another Texas person weighing in. I use crawfish, but I’ve heard crawdads abundantly.
I learned as an adult that they were called crawfish… and that they are delicious.
Plenty of crawdads to be found here in Colorado, and they are mighty good eatin’. One night while crawdadding at Blue Mesa Reservoir, I had to explain to a Colorado state park ranger what I was doing – he’d never heard of it before.
Minnesota here. We had crawdads in the lake where I grew up. When the water tables rose, they disappeared. Mainly, they were awfully small to bother cooking and eating, but my father thought they were great for scaring people - he would hide them in our beach towels.
Crawdads are what we caught in the creek behind the house when we were kids.
Crayfish is what I ordered in a fancy restaurant.
Mudbugs is the name of the local Cajun place that according to their menu serves Crawfish.
They’re sold as dissection specimens in the biological supply catalogs as crayfish. Therefore, they’re crayfish.
Crawdads if I find them in the creek. Crawfish if I’m eating them.